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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

There outcome of a game is completely determined by these four factors:

experience

luck

material advantages

advantages in game settings

And if we take a closer look at each of these factors:

Experience, this factor in itself I think we can all agree is rather pointless. A less experienced player, all others being equal, will not play against a more experienced player, and nobody would be surprised if the more experienced person won. And yes he will always win because we have already established that all other factors being equal.

Luck, is obviously pointless because you might as well play rock paper scissors instead.

Material advantages, this would include things from better computers to a better brain with higher intelligence or reaction speed. I don't find this interesting because it is per-determined before the game have started, there is nothing you can do to change it.

Advantaged in game settings. This would include advantages such as level or chosen character. Like the previous one, this is also per-determined and in a perfect game, should be perfectly equal and thus relevant.

For these reasons, I find it pointless to try and win against other players of similar level, because you either won by luck, material advantages, or you've been playing for longer, non of which seems like a very convincing reason.

Instead, I find the joy of playing competitive game not in the opponent, but in your team mates.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

I really liked the design of that, what should we call it? A gunship? You know what I'm talking about, it's one of the main reasons I went to see this movie. However now that I have seen it, I would say there weren't that much more to it, kind of disappointed.

The movie starts off well and was really engaging until the ending, which I think sucked a lot because of major plot holes.

How did the aliens build the drones gunships and houses? What do they even look like? How would you know all the details in design without actually coming to Earth first and test them out?

The Titan mission was supposed to be 2017, we're at 2013 now and I don't think we're even close to that sorts of technology. Should've made it 2037 or something. I mean it's just a simple change in a few of the lines it doesn't make any difference to the story, why not?

How do the ocean suckers work?

This one is so lame it's lame to even point it out, Why Earth? There's water elsewhere in the Solar System, there are moons entirely made of ice. There's more H3 on The moon as well.

Why do they need the protagonist anyway? He can't fix bullet holes he can only replace batteries. That seems like a very expensive way to charge up your drones.

The idea that you can just deliver a nuke into the core of the Alien's mother ship, blow it up and stop everything else already on Earth is just incredibly cliche, stupid and improbable.

Identical copies is one of the biggest enemies of story telling, whether it's clones teleporters or parallel universes. When there are multiple copies of your character, you just don't really care anymore. One of the I would say, unsuccessful ways to deal with it is that you pretend that is not the case. Even though there are thousands of protagonists, only two are supposed to be special because we saw them on screen. What about the others? They'll just keep having sex with the equally unimportant copilot clone?

In the beginning they said something about two weeks. Gives me the impression that these clones only have a life expectancy of two weeks. What happened to that?

Where are the other resistances? don't tell me these couple of guys are the only ones left.

The design of the alien ship sucks, it's just triangles and more triangles. Why would there be so many clones in there? why do they need so many? And why would they build so many of those pots in an interstellar ship before coming over? is that an effective use of space? Why is there is much empty space? Why is there air in the center chamber?

How did they know that they would let Jack go in to the very center? What about the drone? How did they know it could even reach the center?

storming the resistance base with drones seemed so easy, why didn't they do it earlier?

If the other Jack is just as good, what made the first one special? obviously all of his clones were identical and they are all good, none of them was ever a killing machine, they were just mechanics to begin with.

Most NASA astronauts I've seen on TV, especially females, are not half as attractive as those two, even though they're not among the most attractive actresses.

Memory wipes never work, might as well just not even try. Lesson learned aliens and government secret organizations!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

There are different kinds of synergizing and not all of them are equal.

Useless. This would be like building Seraph's Embrace on Riven without Litch Bane.

No synergy. This means that the items provides stats to the champion as-is and there isn't any additional benefit to it. For example Attack Damage on Lux or Health on Ezreal.

Useful. This means that the item provides stats to the champion as-is, but the stat is especially useful. For example AP on most casters except the likes of Vladmir or Xerath.

Synergy. This means that the item provides stats to the champion as-is, but in addition, does something else. This would be true of Attack Damage on any champion who also have skills scaling off of attack damage. This way you benefit both from auto attacks, and your abilities.

Multiple synergy. This means that there are multiple additional benefits from the same stat increase. For example Muramana on Ryze increases his skill damage via mana, but also its active ability, and boosts his auto attacks in two different ways, as well as giving him more mana to cast abilities.

Some items can provide additional synergy to a champion who otherwise does not have it. For example Litch Bane can make AP on Riven at least receive some benefit.

Resistance and health synergize with each other, the more resistance you have the more effective is health and vice versa. Therefore both are considered "Synergy" on a tanky build, but to a less extend for an ADC's only defensive item.

In the same way, Attack Speed, Attack Damage, Critical Chance and Critical damage synergize with each other.

Some items synergize with itself, like Seraph's Embrace and Muramana. Even items with synergizing defensive stats like Sunfire Cape.

With the exception of the max autoattack build (PD+BT+IE) and the two Tear of the Goddess items, most build items are on the levels between "Useful" and "Synergy", Multiple synergy is relatively rare. Champions with multiple synergy items usually have significant weaknesses.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

It is more efficient to build attack speed on champions with higher base attack speed. Champions also passively gain percentage attack speed which is irrelevant to the efficiency of AS items. For example Shaco has one of the highest lv.1 base AS of 0.694 although Ashe is higher at lv.18, AS is still more efficient on Shaco rather than Ashe.

Critical chance or other damage boosting effects are not enhanced by attack speed more than attack damage. This includes passives like Double Strike or Headshot. This is because overall these things increase your DPS by a fixed percentage. increasing your attack speed or attack damage by the same percentage will be multiplied to that percentage, giving the same end result. In fact it is better to build damage because you get more burst although with the same DPS.

Your attack speed is irrelevant to the effectiveness of attack speed slows. It doesn't matter if you have 2.5 attack speed or 1.2 attack speed. A frozen heart or Dragon debuff will hurt you exactly the same.

% health damage does not "counter" health items. It only makes health items weaker, not entirely useless. It is therefore unwise to not build health items no matter how stacked the enemy team is on % health damage.

With manipulatively stacked stats like equivalent health (resistance x health) and DPS (damage x attack speed). It is most optimal to build both equally. Defensive builds can be tuned more towards resistance than normally optimal when the enemy team is heavily stacked on % health damage. This means the more damage you have, the more effective attack speed becomes and vice versa.

% current health is a misleading concept. You have to remember that first, because it is current health, you can never burn someone to death with Liandry's. And secondly, calculating bonus damage for max health is misleading because most of the time the enemy you will be attacking does not have full health. it is more informative to calculate their half health instead. Consider the same problem for Taric's passive and Muramana.

Resistance has diminishing returns, which means the less they have ,the more valuable is penetration, because the first few points of resistance are especially effective. The same is true for % penetration and resistance reduction to a lesser extent.

Item stacking is almost always gold inefficient, I'd say that's how they were designed in the first place. However, it doesn't mean it is stat inefficient. For example, I would say that building 4x IE on Garen has the highest possible damage although extremely gold inefficient because of the wasted passive. Making this build extremely difficult in most games.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Batman The Dark Knight Returns part 1 and part 2 are two animated feature films by DC comics released on Bluray in 2012 and 2013. Not to be confused with the live action films.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2313197/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2166834/

They both have high ratings on IMDB but I think this rating is extremely biased because people who watch these American superhero movies probably never watch Japanese animation and there really just isn't any comparison. The standards are just so far apart.

Look at this comparison, is this some kind of a joke? what kind of a race car is that? just total lack of detail on top of plain and bad design. And look at the background, just no comparison. Also note I am being extremely kind because these city buildings is probably one of the best backgrounds in the entire film while on the other hand the train station has pretty much the same quality as all other backgrounds.

To be honest the characters are not that bad, pretty much on par with an average Japanese TV production, except it seems to be full frame rate instead of the half. But needless to say, no sexy girls means a minus for American!

I know I know, some of these can't be compared because of the difference in frame rate and methods of animation and all the other things, resulting in drastically different still frame and animation quality and stuff. But just look at it... I don't think Batman is top notch in any possible sense.

However, the worst part I think is the design, there is just no thought process going behind these batman weapons, and no thought process behind the story as well.

In order to defeat an army of evil gang members, which by the way, all have assault rifles grenades and even mortars. Batman uses a giant tank which is so huge it's more like a mobile base with several room inside. It is obviously equipped with rockets and large caliber guns. However Batman somehow manages to not kill anyone while rolling this steel beast into the evil gang army but still disabling all of them without exception. How does he do it? rubber bullets! that's the explanation! That's got to be one of the stupidest explanation I've ever heard. For God's sake the bat tank doesn't even have small caliber guns how does he even fire rubber bullets? and how does he not run over some body in the process?

Batman's suit is obviously bullet proof enough to stop a machine gun round at one instance. But fails to stop a pistol round from the Joker in another scene. It also doesn't stop knives by the way, although it stops glass shrapnel.

Batman flies a voice controlled helicopter with a microphone on the dashboard. It could also be rewired by some random school girl to accept different words as commands. And by the way, it also have optical camouflage and it can hide the helicopters noise as well as air turbulence.

The new Robin is some random school girl who just decides that she will become a martial arts and free run expert overnight. She is suddenly able to fight gang members with assault rifles with ease and leap 10 meters high up roller coaster tracks.

Batman tries to stop the Joker from doing something, but ends up doing nothing but fight police officers on a roof top and retreats. Did he not plan everything out before he jumped out of his helicopter?

Batman's throwing darts are actually more accurate than guns, but he uses a gun to fire his rope in an earlier scene.

Batman defeats the evil gang by winning a fist fight with their leader. Most of the gang members immediately switches allegiance to Batman and they become the hope for the future of justice in Gotham. Does this make any sense to you? First of all why would these gang members be so simple shallow and stupid? Secondly how are they even remotely reliable to carry on Batman's duty?

You can make criminals nice just by making a 10 second inspirational speech.

The reason batman could win a fist fight with the gang leader was because they were both in deep mud and it makes them slow. But wait a minute, does the mud make Batman slower because he is already slower and weaker than the gang leader? And what was his backup plan? what if he looses?

Why doesn't Batman wear his Ironman armor to fight the gang leader and kill him with one punch?

Why does batman carry things like thermite and C-4 with him? are those needed for his non-lethal missions?

Why is batman's dart razor sharp what if he hits someone by accident and kills them?

Why does Batman have a suit of iron man armor?

Superman can lift and throw batman's giant tank with ease but he can't do the same with armored batman although he came riding inside of the giant bat tank.

batman can cut aircraft carriers with his heat vision but can't hurt batman's suit with it.

Superman gains his power from the sun but looses power from nuclear explosions which is the same as radiation from the sun? Does this make any sense?

Nuclear blasts from space produces a giant fireball and lots of smoke cloud as well as shock waves.

Batman looses his armored helpmate in the fight against Superman but he can still take Superman's throws and punches when his head clearly came in contact with concrete floors and Superman's fist. Why isn't he instantly killed in those situations?

superman is faster than bullets and he doesn't dodge bullets, Yet he catches the kryptonite arrow so that it blows up in his face?

Does superman even breath? why would the kryptonite go into his lungs?

there is still war when America has Superman who basically stomps all Russian armies.

Why doesn't Superman just disable the Russian nuke, why doesn't he leave before it blows up why doesn't he turn it around, why does he have trouble turning it around when he is shown to have greater strength elsewhere. Why doesn't he just manipulate its control surfaces instead of forcing it. Why doesn't he just block the thrust or freeze it with freeze breath.

Why is the nuke going through the atmosphere anyway, aren't they supposed to be dropping from space unpowered?

How does superman show up on radars? I thought he's too small to be detected by radars in the 80s?

Monday, April 1, 2013

It's just the little things that make or break a game. I've seen Gamespot's 4.5 review score when it came out for consoles. I was like yea you may be right but it doesn't matter because Ada Wong is in it so I'll play it no matter how bad it might be. But after playing it for like 20 minutes I think I'm gonna have to say, it sucks so bad I don't want to play it any more. Not even Ada Wong can pull me back, even her boobs and butt are out of shape in this horrible game.

blurry textures on several occasions

why would you keep the stupid healing herb in an otherwise realistic style game environment? it breaks the atmosphere so much.

how exactly is the beautiful lady hurt? is her leg broken? or is she having a bad stomachache? how does Leon patch her up in the field?

why is the action so short most of the time I'm just pressing quick action buttons instead of shooting zombies or looking at the environment which looks like shit.

Why is Ada naked in the sub? I mean I know it's a sub and nobody can see her in there but why would she be naked and then get dressed later when she arrives?

Where are her gun holsters? she had them back in her house but no in an hostile submarine crawling with sea zombies?

why is her boob so flat?

why is her rear not very attractive when she enters air ducks?

the camera angle is horrible, I can't see what I'm doing I don't know where the enemies are, and I don't know how to use covers and stuff

the animation feels stiff when she jumps

how come the quickshot function only shoots one shot from the SMG which is basically nothing when compared to another weapon like the shot gun.

there is this part where you are trying to out run the rising water or else the game ends, but it's hard to get on ladders you just run around in circles at the base unable to get to the spot where you can press the action button to get on.

the door puzzle just sucks, you're supposed to make three rotating pieces match an eagle, there is zero difficulty, except you have to run around the room since the controls are scattered all over the place, just wasting time. And it doesn't seem to work unless you turn each one of them through a complete cycle. On top of that, you loose health to check the door to see if you got it right.

the swimming control is just horrendous, rotating the camera takes forever. I know she's in water but don't tell me it also prevents her head and eyeballs from turning!

sometimes you can't hear what's she saying because she says them when something is exploding.

the enemies are a complete pain in the ass, whenever an enemy decides to mutate instead of dying, you have to wait for the mutation to complete before you can kill them, which takes several seconds and there is no indication as to whether or not they are taking damage.

Ada's outfit is tasteless, I'm all for showing off the lovely ladies but it just doesn't fit the setting at all. Why isn't she is a tight body suit or something? why is she wearing just a light silk shirt where does she keep her weapons and equipments?

her phone sucks, worse than the lame transparent phones, it's just a stupid cube.

they're trying to imitate the live inventory thing from Dead Space. But this isn't a horror game it doesn't help with the atmosphere! besides, why is the game menu also joining the no pause party? instead there is a separate pause button! why can't I just pause with the game menu? what's the point? why should I be faced with in-game threats while I'm trying to change settings that are outside of the game!? Am I supposed to believe that Ada is somehow able to turn on her phone and quit the mission any time during the action?

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Last time I talked about how it is shameful to play these so called "unfair" games since I'm not looking to improve my self. But there are some counter arguments as to why I would be justified to do it for fun:

In a single player game, there is usually a difficulty setting, and the games are designed such that it is possible for you to win at everything, you can beat these games. But in a competitive multiplayer game, you can't beat it. No matter how good you get, it always matches you with even better players so the best you can do is win slightly more than 50% of the time. May I ask why is that? I mean I understand it's multiplayer but that's not the question, the question is why I can't win all the time. No why others can't loose all the time. You see where I'm getting at? I think it's kind of like democracy, it isn't a perfect solution, but fairness like democracy, is a solution to shut everyone up.

Nobody would be happy with the game if they lost every single time, so
what you do is invent a term called "fairness" and teach people that
fair games are the best. But really, are they? Suppose that I am an individual with immense power, whether that's super natural or in the form of wealth. And suppose I were to somehow control the matchmaking system of the game and is able to make sure I win more than I loose. Would I do that if I could? I think I would. Would you do that? would you make sure that all the trolls and noobs always end up on the enemy team instead of yours? I think you would as well. Although that is beyond my capabilities, but I can play custom games that will guarantee a win for myself, and that is what I'm doing.

The reason I play this game, frankly, is not to get good at it, oh nooo. I like quite a variety of games, but I never play to get good at them. Instead, I play to have fun. I mean I would give some efforts if it was engaging enough. I played through Tomb Raider without cheats, and I intend to do the same with Bioshock Infinite. Those are great games and the normal difficulty can be beat without too much practice, keeping the action fresh and new, not repetitive. But that is not the case with a competitive multiplayer game like League of Legends, Especially not LoL, because here, not only do you have to practice repeatedly for excellent personal skill. You also have to put up with trash talkers and trolls through hundreds of games just to get to gold or platinum tier where there are presumably fewer of them. That is not what I signed up for, not by myself.

I do have my rules still

no smurf accounts, I always do this with my lv.30 account so ppl know what I am trying to do.

no deceptive rooms. I do not create rooms saying "noob friendly" or something like that and wait for a prey, I always join others.